Inoue, Y and Havard, CT and Irwin, RL (2016)Roles of sport and cause in-volvement in determining employees’ beliefs about cause-related sport spon-sorship. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, 17 (1).pp. 3-18. ISSN 1464-6668

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1

Roles of Sport and Cause Involvement in Determining Employees’ Beliefs about Cause-related

Sport Sponsorship

Yuhei Inoue

University of Minnesota

School of Kinesiology

224 Cooke Hall 1900 University Ave. SE

Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

Tel: 1-612-624-2317

Fax: 1-612-626-7700

Email: yinoue@umn.edu

Cody T. Havard

The University of Memphis

Department of Health and Sport Sciences

304 Elma Roane Fieldhouse

Memphis, TN 38152, USA

Tel: 1-901-678-5011

Fax: 1-901-678-3591

Email: chavard@memphis.edu

Richard L. Irwin

The University of Memphis

Academic Innovation and Support Services

231 Administration Building

Memphis, TN 38152, USA

Email: rirwin@memphis.edu

Authors Notes:

Yuhei Inoue is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management in the School of Kinesiology at the

University of Minnesota, USA. His primary research interest is to understand the ability of sport

to promote positive social development.

Cody T. Havard is an Assistant Professor of Sport Commerce at The University of Memphis,

USA. His research interests involve perceptions of rival teams, consumer behavior, and the use

of online social networking by athletes and sport organizations.

Richard L. Irwin is the Interim Vice Provost for Academic Innovation and Support Services at

the University of Memphis, USA. He is an expert in the areas of sport marketing and

sponsorship.

Please cite this article as: Inoue, Y., Havard, C.T., & Irwin, R. L. (2016). Roles of sport and

cause involvement in determining employees’ beliefs about cause-related sport sponsorship.

International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship, 17(1), 3-18.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJSMS-02-2016-001

2

Executive Summary

The observation of recent corporate practices suggests that corporate sponsors implement cause-

related sport sponsorship (Irwin et al, 2003) as part of their internal marketing. Although no

research has investigated cause-related sport sponsorship through the lens of internal marketing,

the sponsorship of a sport property has been shown to serve as an effective internal marketing

strategy (Hickman et al, 2005). A prevalent logic for the efficacy of sport sponsorship in internal

marketing is that a company can generate the perception of goodwill by sponsoring a sport

organization or activity that is important to its employees (Meenaghan, 2001; Zepf, 2008). By

applying this logic to cause-related sport sponsorship, it can be presumed that employees’

involvement with the sponsored sport also determines the effectiveness of this category of

sponsorship in eliciting their positive responses.

This presumption, however, fails to consider the potential role of employees’

involvement with the sponsored cause. Because of its cause affiliation, employees’ reaction to

cause-related sport sponsorship may be different from their reaction to regular sport sponsorship.

Indeed, research on consumers suggests that the cause affiliation, rather than the sport affiliation,

of cause-related sport sponsorship predominantly determines the consumer evaluation of this

category of sponsorship (Irwin et al, 2003, 2010; Lee & Ferreira, 2013). Consequently, the

purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of employees’ involvement with the sponsored

sport (i.e., sport involvement) and with the sponsored cause (i.e., cause involvement) to explain

how their beliefs about cause-related sport sponsorship are determined. Drawing from the

concept of goodwill (Meenaghan & Shipley, 1999), we tested if employees’ levels of sport and

cause involvement would be positively associated with their beliefs about the company’s

sponsorship of a cause-related sport event.

3

The research setting was the FedEx St. Jude Classic (FESJC), a PGA TOUR event that

benefits St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the United States. The target population was

employees of the corporate sponsors of the 2012 FESJC at the time of data collection. The final

sample included 131 attendees who identified themselves as employees of an event sponsor in a

web-based post-event survey. The respondents completed the survey that included the measures

of sport involvement, cause involvement, and sponsorship beliefs adopted from previous studies.

The results of a regression analysis indicated that cause involvement had a significant

positive association with sponsorship beliefs (β = .48, t = 6.17, p < .001), whereas sport

involvement had a non-significant association (β = .08, t = 1.08, p = .28). These results provide

insight into how employees develop their beliefs about cause-related sport sponsorship.

Specifically, although research examining sport sponsorship has demonstrated that the degree to

which employees are psychologically connected with the sponsored sport determines their

response to the sponsorship (Hickman et al, 2005; Zepf, 2008), our findings show that employees

predominantly refer to their psychological connection with the sponsored cause, not the

sponsored sport, in assessing the sponsorship of a cause-related sport event.

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Abstract

This study investigated the roles of employees’ involvement with the sponsored sport and cause

in determining their beliefs about cause-related sport sponsorship. Despite the prevailing logic

that companies can enhance the perception of goodwill by sponsoring sport that is important to

their employees, employees’ sport involvement was found to have no effect on their sponsorship

beliefs. In contrast, cause involvement alone explained a large amount of the variance in those

beliefs.

Keywords: cause-related marketing, involvement, sponsorship, internal marketing

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Roles of Sport and Cause Involvement in Determining Employees’ Beliefs about Cause-related

Sport Sponsorship

Introduction

The observation of recent corporate practices suggests that companies have increasingly used

cause-related sport sponsorship as part of their internal marketing. For example, Best Buy

integrated its sponsorship of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR)

with support for various charities; the company provided its employees with the opportunity to

work with the NASCAR Foundation to volunteer for affiliated charities, and awarded grants to

the foundation based on the total number of hours the employees donated to volunteer work

(Spanberg, 2012). In 2011, FedEx Corporation (FedEx) resumed its title sponsorship of the

FedEx St. Jude Classic (FESJC), a PGA TOUR event that benefits St. Jude Children’s Research

Hospital (St. Jude) in Memphis, Tennessee, in the United States. As one of the company’s

executives noted, this sponsorship is intended to allow “thousands of Memphis-based FedEx

employees to play a direct role in the support of St. Jude” (FedEx, 2011, para. 5). In both

examples, the companies primarily used cause-related sport sponsorship, or the sponsorship of a

sport property linked to a nonprofit organization or a social cause (Irwin et al, 2003), to satisfy

employee needs and increase morale.

To date, no research has investigated cause-related sport sponsorship through the lens of

internal marketing. The literature, however, has suggested that the sponsorship of a sport

property without a close cause affiliation serves as an effective internal marketing strategy

(Crowley, 1991; Cunningham et al, 2009; Farrelly & Greyser, 2007, 2012; Grimes &

Meenaghan, 1998; Hickman et al, 2005; Pichot et al, 2008; Rines, 2002; Rogan, 2008; Tripodi,

2001; Zepf, 2008). A prevalent rationale for the efficacy of regular sport sponsorship in internal

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marketing is that a company can generate the perception of goodwill by sponsoring a sport

organization or activity that is important to its employees (Meenaghan, 2001; Zepf, 2008).

Specifically, employees tend to perceive their company’s sponsorship of a sport property to be

beneficial to them and society if they are highly involved with the sport property. In turn, such

perceived benefits, or goodwill, lead the employees to develop a favorable response to the

company (Meenaghan, 2001; Zepf, 2008).

If this logic is applicable to cause-related sport sponsorship, employees’ involvement

with the sponsored sport should also determine the effectiveness of this category of sponsorship

in eliciting their positive responses. This presumption, however, fails to consider the potential

role of employees’ involvement with the sponsored cause. Because of its cause affiliation,

employees’ reaction to cause-related sport sponsorship may be different from their reaction to

regular sport sponsorship. Indeed, research on consumers suggests that the cause affiliation,

rather than the sport affiliation, of cause-related sport sponsorship predominantly determines the

consumer evaluation of this category of sponsorship (Irwin et al, 2003, 2010; Lee & Ferreira,

2013), although some evidence still points to the opposite conclusion (Inoue & Havard, 2014).

The findings from the consumer research highlight the importance of assessing the effect of

employees’ involvement with the sponsored sport in cause-related sport sponsorship and further

exploring the extent to which their involvement with the sponsored cause affects their evaluation

of the sponsorship.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of employees’ involvement with the

sponsored sport (i.e., sport involvement) and with the sponsored cause (i.e., cause involvement)

to explain how their evaluation of cause-related sport sponsorship would be determined.

Specifically, employees’ evaluation was examined through their beliefs about how their

7

company’s cause-related sport sponsorship would enhance their attitudes toward the company.

Beliefs refer to the linkages people establish between an object (e.g., cause-related sport

sponsorship in this study) and some benefits or consequences (e.g., favorable attitudes toward the

company; Eagly & Chaiken, 1998; Madrigal, 2001). We focused on beliefs because they serve

“as the informational base that ultimately determines…attitudes, intentions, and behaviors”

(Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975, p. 14). Consequently, the effects of sponsorship-related attributes (e.g.,

sport and cause involvement) on beliefs about sponsorship initiate a hierarchy of effects in which

those beliefs, through their effects on attitudes, influence more specific sponsorship outcomes,

such as behavioral intentions and organizational identification (Khan & Stanton, 2010; Hickman

et al, 2005); this hierarchy underscores the central role of beliefs in determining employees’

sponsorship evaluation.

Background and Hypotheses

Sponsorship as an Internal Marketing Tool

Employee turnover can result in significant costs; a recent study by the Center for American

Progress estimated that companies spend approximately 20% of an employee’s salary to replace

that employee (Boushey & Glynn, 2012). Consequently, it is critical for a company to

implement various internal marketing activities designed to satisfy the needs of employees and

promote their retention (Berry et al, 1976). An internal marketing tool that has attracted high

interest in the literature is sponsorship linked internal marketing, which entails “all activities

associated with the conceptualization and leveraging of sport sponsorship to better satisfy

employee needs as a way of preparing them to serve customers more effectively” (Farrelly &

Greyser, 2012, pp. 506-507). A firm can use affiliation with sport teams or events to increase

employee motivation or facilitate a major change in its structure (Farrelly & Greyser, 2007); to

8

enhance employee involvement with corporate activities (Pichot et al, 2008); to boost employee

morale (Spanberg, 2012); and to build corporate identity, communicate corporate identity and

expectations, and increase employee participation in staff development programs (Farrelly &

Greyser, 2012). Previous studies investigating how sport sponsorship creates internal marketing

benefits focused on the role of employees’ connection with sponsored sport properties, such as

their affinity for a NASCAR team (Hickman et al, 2005) and personal liking for a college

football bowl game (Zepf, 2008).

Role of Activation in Sponsorship Linked Internal Marketing

When a company uses sport sponsorship for internal marketing, it is important that managers

effectively and efficiently activate the sponsorship opportunity. For example, sponsors may use

high-performance athletes as guest speakers to motivate employees who have a high affinity for

the athletes and even influence employees not identifying as sport fans to appreciate the human

aspect and stories of struggles by the athletes (Farrelly & Greyser, 2012). As a successful

example of sponsorship activation, United Parcel Service, a U.S.-based logistics and shipment

company, leveraged its sponsorship of college athletics programs by rewarding delivery drivers

with exemplary safety records the opportunity to deliver game balls to referees before games

(Spanberg, 2012). NASCAR provided employees of its corporate sponsors with the opportunity

to attend hospitality events with drivers before races. When the Bridgestone Corporation (an auto

parts manufacture) was a sponsor of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the company used the

sponsorship to reward high performing employees with a trip to attend the game (Spanberg,

2012). As these examples indicate, companies should strive to ensure that sport sponsorships

align with their business objectives; employees support potential sponsorships; and the value of a

sponsorship is highlighted through activation efforts (Rogan, 2008). In particular, marketing and

9

human relations departments should work together to engage employees in sport sponsorships

and intentionally use the sponsorships to create identity for employees, communicate

performance expectations, and motivate employees (Farrelly & Greyser, 2012).

Cause-related Sport Sponsorship

Cause-related sport sponsorship refers to the sponsorship of a sport property that is associated

with a cause or a charity (Irwin et al, 2003). This category of sponsorship is distinguishable from

traditional sponsorships that support either a sport or a cause because of its affiliation with both

sport and cause properties (Cornwell et al, 2005). This dual association of cause-related sport

sponsorship may provide corporate sponsors with additional challenges in achieving their

business objectives because their target individuals may be highly involved with either the

sponsored sport or cause, but not with both (Inoue & Havard, 2014; Lee, 2009; Lee & Ferreira,

2013). For example, Inoue and Havard (2014) found that although attendees of a cause-related

sport event on average reported high scores on cause and sport involvement, the strength of the

correlation between these two constructs was weak (r = .14). Similarly, Lee and Ferreira (2013)

identified a weak correlation between consumers’ identification with a sport team and their

identification with a non-profit organization affiliated with the team (r = .11). These weak

correlations suggest that a group of individuals with high sport involvement does not overlap

with a group of individuals with high cause involvement, thereby indicating that companies

engaging in cause-related sport sponsorship must satisfy the needs of both groups to generate

positive outcomes through the sponsorship.

A review of extant literature suggests that there are two types of cause-related sport

sponsorship (Fortunato, 2009; Inoue & Havard, 2014; Irwin et al, 2003, 2010). The first type is a

firm’s sponsorship of a cause-related sport event, a spectator sport event that is directly linked to

10

a specific cause and operates with the purpose of raising funds for a specific benefactor (Inoue &

Havard, 2014). The FESJC is an example of a cause-related sport event because it is directly

related to a specific cause (i.e., pediatric cancer and other catastrophic illnesses) and raises

money and awareness for its benefactor, St. Jude. The second type of cause-related sport

sponsorship includes a firm’s sponsorship of sport organizations’ community involvement

activities as collaborative efforts to support a charity or cause. Examples of this type are the

collaboration between NASCAR and Best Buy for implementing the employee volunteering

program (Spanberg, 2012) and Chevrolet’s sponsorship of Major League Baseball’s Roberto

Clemente Award (Fortunato, 2009). Of these two types, this study focused on the first type—

company sponsorship of a cause-related sport event—to investigate how the involvement of

employees with sport and cause, two properties involved in a cause-related sport sponsorship,

influence employees’ beliefs about the sponsorship.

Goodwill in Sponsorship

In sponsorship research, goodwill refers to an individual’s perception that the sponsorship of an

activity provides benefits to the individual and society (McDonald, 1991; Meenaghan, 1991,

2001; Meenaghan & Shipley, 1999). According to social exchange theory, individuals tend to

engage in reciprocal relationships where they provide benefits for an entity in return for the

benefits provided by that entity (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). Therefore, goodwill enhances

sponsorship effectiveness by generating a favorable response to certain sponsorship, which in

turn helps the sponsor obtain desired business outcomes, such as positive consumer attitude and

purchase intention toward its products (Meenaghan, 2001).

Although the sponsorship of any activity produces goodwill, the extent of this perception

correlates with the level of involvement with a given sponsored activity (Meenaghan, 2001;

11

Meenaghan & Shipley, 1999); the more involved a person is with the activity, the higher level of

benefits and resultant goodwill the person perceives from the sponsorship of that activity. This

implies that a company can increase business returns from its sponsorship investment by

sponsoring an activity with which its target audiences are actively involved.

Positive Association between Sport Involvement and Employees’ Sponsorship Beliefs

Sport involvement refers to an individual’s psychological connection with a sport object “with

respect to being a central component of her/his life, and one that provides both hedonic and

symbolic value” (Beaton et al, 2011, p.436). Building on the linkage among goodwill,

involvement, and positive business outcomes, past studies on sport consumers investigated the

role of sport involvement in explaining how the sponsorship of a sport property creates business

benefits for the sponsor (Ko et al, 2008; Lascu et al, 1995; Levin et al, 2001; Meenaghan, 2001).

Specifically, researchers have examined consumer involvement with sport activity (e.g., golf;

Lascu et al, 1995), sport organizations (e.g., NASCAR; Levin et al, 2001), and sport

participation/spectatorship in general (Ko et al, 2008), and have found that highly involved

consumers are more likely to reward the sponsor of sport properties. In addition, although

research on cause-related sport sponsorship is limited, Inoue and Havard (2014) showed that

local consumers’ sport involvement would indirectly influence their intentions to consider

products of the sponsors of a cause-related sport event through the enhanced perception of the

community benefits of the event.

Available evidence on sponsorship linked internal marketing also suggests that

“companies can influence employees in the same way that promoters of a spectator sport sway

consumers” (Hickman et al, 2005, p. 151). In particular, constructs closely related to sport

involvement, such as sport affinity (Hickman et al, 2005) and personal liking for sport (Zepf,

12

2008), have been found to determine employee response to the company’s sponsorship of sport

events. In Hickman et al (2005), employee affinity for a NASCAR team sponsored by a firm was

positively associated with the level of identification with and commitment to the firm and

willingness to satisfy customers. Zepf (2008) found a positive relationship between the liking of

employees for a company-sponsored college football bowl game and their levels of identification

with their company. Another important finding of Zepf is that employees’ evaluation of goodwill

of the sponsorship also predicted their levels of identification with their company. The collective

evidence thus points to the linkage among sport liking, goodwill, and the outcome (Zepf, 2008).

Although no research has provided direct evidence for the relationship between

employees’ sport involvement and beliefs about sponsorship, we expected the findings of the

previous studies (Hickman et al, 2005; Zepf, 2008) to be applicable to this hypothesized

relationship. This is because (a) sport involvement represents psychological connection with

sport more broadly than the previously examined constructs including sport affinity and personal

liking (Beaton et al, 2011; Funk et al, 2004); and (b) as noted earlier, beliefs are thought to

transmit the effects of sponsorship-related attributes (including sport involvement) on more

specific sponsorship outcomes examined in the past research, such as behavioral intentions and

organizational identification (Khan & Stanton, 2010; Madrigal, 2001).

In summary, the concept of goodwill (Meenaghan, 2001) and social exchange theory

(Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005), along with the findings of sport sponsorship studies on

consumers (Ko et al, 2008; Lascu et al, 1995; Levin et al, 2001; Meenaghan, 2001) and

employees (Hickman et al, 2005; Zepf, 2008), result in the following proposition: Employees

who are actively involved with the sponsored sport likely recognize goodwill in cause-related

sport sponsorship, which, in turn, would lead the employees to develop positive beliefs about the

13

sponsorship. This proposition must be confirmed explicitly for cause-related sport sponsorship

because its cause affiliation may influence the role of sport involvement in forming employees’

sponsorship beliefs, as discussed in the introduction. We thus tested the following hypothesis:

H1: The higher levels of sport involvement employees have, the more positive beliefs the

employees develop about cause-related sport sponsorship.

Positive Association between Cause Involvement and Employees’ Sponsorship Beliefs

Cause involvement is defined as personal relevance or “the level of perceived personal

importance” (Grau & Folse, 2007, p. 20) of a given cause to individuals. Given this definition,

researchers have also called this construct cause importance (Inoue & Havard, 2014) or cause

relevance (Berger et al, 1999). Although the sponsorship of a cause generally leads to a higher

level of goodwill than the sponsorship of other categories (e.g., art, sport) does (Meenaghan,

2001), the level of goodwill associated with cause sponsorship increases for individuals with

high cause involvement (Cornwell & Coote, 2005; Grau & Folse, 2007; Scott & Solomon, 2003).

For example, Grau and Folse (2007) showed that consumers were more likely to support a

company’s campaign providing financial assistance for a cause, as their involvement with the

cause became greater. Cornwell and Coote (2005) examined a related construct, consumers’

identification with a sponsored cause, finding that consumers tend to develop greater purchase

intentions toward a sponsor’s product if they are highly identified with the cause. Through

interviews with participants of a cause-related fitness event supporting breast cancer, Scott and

Solomon (2003) identified the linkage among cause involvement, goodwill, and positive

response to corporate sponsorship. The researchers demonstrated that personal involvement with

the cause (i.e., breast cancer) and the perceived personal and social benefits of the event were

main reasons for participating in the event. In addition, some participants “commended the

14

corporate participation and expressed gratitude for sponsorship generosity” (Scott & Solomon,

2003, p. 58).

Furthermore, the findings of Drumwright (1996) implied that the important role of cause

involvement identified among consumers (Cornwell & Coote, 2005; Grau & Folse, 2007; Scott

& Solomon, 2003) is applicable to employees. By conducting interviews with employees of

companies engaging in different cause sponsorship campaigns, the researcher found that

employees who had high affinity for a cause tended to indicate a campaign supporting the cause

as successful (Drumwright, 1996). Although the findings of the previous studies seem to suggest

the positive association between cause involvement and employees’ beliefs about cause-related

sport sponsorship, research has yet to provide direct evidence for this association. Therefore, we

tested the second hypothesis:

H2: The higher levels of cause involvement employees have, the more positive beliefs the

employees develop about cause-related sport sponsorship.

Method

Research Setting

The FESJC is a cause-related sport event held annually in Memphis, Tennessee, in the United

States. While the FESJC is a regular professional golf tournament sanctioned by the PGA

TOUR, this event also represents a fundraising event for St. Jude, a local non-profit medical

organization for pediatric cancer and other catastrophic diseases. Since 1970, the event has

generated over $25 million in donations for St. Jude by conducting various activities that aim to

raise the awareness of the cause throughout the tournament week. In previous events, for

example, St. Jude patients were featured, and caddies for the tour professionals wore bibs

designed by St. Jude patients. Special fundraising events, including music concerts and a pro-am

golf tournament, were also conducted at the event venue throughout the tournament week to

15

increase the interests of event attendees in St. Jude. The event organizers further encouraged

players to visit patients during the pre-tournament period and used social media sites to engage

fans and raise awareness of St. Jude year round.

The FESJC is sponsored by over 100 companies whose headquarters or offices are

located in the Memphis area. The financial investments of these sponsors vary by specific

marketing options (e.g., message display on video boards, on-site product exhibition,

advertisement on event programs) through which they seek to expose their names and products

to event attendees. Along with the event’s title sponsor, FedEx, major event sponsors with the

largest financial investment include such companies as AutoZone, ServiceMaster, Thomas &

Betts, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, and Window World.

As noted, increasing employee engagement in sponsorships through activation efforts is

essential for the success of sponsorship linked internal marketing (Farrelly & Greyser, 2012;

Rogan, 2008). In the current setting, for example, the title sponsor FedEx promotes and activates

the FESJC sponsorship internally by encouraging employees to serve as volunteers during the

tournament. Employees volunteering at the event have close access to participants by serving as

crowd monitors during the event, are given time off work to do so, and are treated to a volunteer

hospitality tent during the tournament where they can bring up to three guests. In addition, the

golf course where the FESJC is played is located next to the FedEx headquarters, and the

company runs shuttles from their campus to the tournament during the week so that employees

can avoid having to park at the event. Consistent with these activation efforts, the majority of

employees (65%) included in the sample of this study reported to have volunteered at the 2012

FESJC where the data were collected; this indicates that employees of sponsors including FedEx

are highly engaged in the event. Given its status as a cause-related sport event as well as high

16

employee engagement, the FESJC is an appropriate research setting to examine employees’

beliefs about cause-related sport sponsorship.

Participants and Data Collection Procedure

The target population of this study was employees of the corporate sponsors of the 2012 FESJC

at the time of data collection. The current study was conducted as part of a large project

commissioned by the event organizers to understand attendees’ experiences of this event (Inoue

& Havard, 2014). The sampling method used was convenience sampling, and a web-based post-

event survey was distributed to attendees whose contact information was available in the event

organizer’s email database (the number of individuals in the database was undisclosed by the

organizer) or email lists compiled by the researchers during the event (n = 537). Of 732 attendees

completing the survey, the final sample of this study included 131 attendees who identified

themselves as employees of an event sponsor and provided their responses for all variables used

in the main analysis.

Given the use of convenience sampling, the limited generalization of the results based on

this sample is a potential limitation of the study. To alleviate this limitation, we adopted a

remedy for nonresponse bias, which compares early respondents to late respondents in terms of

their demographics and responses to core variables used in the main analysis (Jordan et al, 2011;

Miller & Smith, 1983). To perform this procedure, the 131 respondents were rank-ordered based

on their survey completion dates. Subsequently, we compared 33 respondents within the 25th

percentile to 33 respondents within the 75th percentile with respect to their demographics and

other variables. Analyses using chi-square tests and MANOVA did not find significant

differences between the two groups in any of the variables examined. These results lessened the

concern for nonresponse bias (Jordan et al, 2011; Miller & Smith, 1983), although the limited

17

generalizability of the study’s findings must be acknowledged because the characteristics of the

target population were unknown.

A summary of demographic characteristics of the 131 respondents is: 67.2% were male;

35.1% were aged between 55 and 64, 32.1% were between 45 and 54, and 18.3% were between

35 and 44; 83.2% were Caucasian/White and 11.5% were African American; 82.4% were

married; 72.5% had at least an undergraduate degree; and 81.7% had an annual household

income of more than $50,000. In addition, of the 131 respondents, 83 indicated their employers

in an open-ended question; they worked for 20 different event sponsors with FedEx being the

most frequently identified employer (63.9%). The other identified sponsors included major event

sponsors listed earlier as well as sponsors with smaller financial investments, such as AutoZone,

ServiceMaster, Trustmark National Bank, Brooks Brothers, and Landers Ford. We performed an

ANOVA to examine if employment with specific sponsors might affect the respondents’

responses to the sponsorship of the 2012 FESJC regarding the dependent variable (i.e.,

sponsorship beliefs). This analysis failed to find significant results, leading us to exclude the

examination of the employer effect from further analyses.

Measures

We identified three multi-item scales (all items measured on a seven-point Likert scale) included

in the current analysis from existing research. First, sport involvement, which was

operationalized as employees’ levels of involvement with the sponsored sport (i.e., golf), was

measured with three items from a sport involvement scale (Beaton et al, 2011; Ridinger et al,

2012). Second, we measured employees’ level of cause involvement, or the extent to which they

found the sponsored cause (i.e., St. Jude) to be personally important and relevant to them (Grau

& Folse, 2007), using three items from a scale developed by Lichtenstein et al (2004). Finally,

18

employees’ beliefs about the sponsorship of the 2012 FESJC were measured with three items

adapted from Speed and Thompson’s (2000) scale. Because Speed and Thompson developed the

scale to measure regular attendees’ (i.e., non-employees) beliefs about how the sponsorship of a

sport event influenced their attitudes toward the event sponsor, we modified the wording of the

items to be aligned with the investigation of employees. The three items were designed to

collectively measure employees’ beliefs about how the sponsorship of FESJC positively

influenced the affective (i.e., feeling more favorable toward the company), cognitive (i.e.,

improving the perception of the company), and behavioral (i.e., more likely to stay with the

company) aspects of their attitudes toward their company.

Reliability and validly assessment. After the data collection, we assessed the

psychometric properties of the three scales through a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using

Mplus 7.0. The maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors (MLR) was

employed as an estimation method to address the potential violation of multivariate normality

(Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2012). The analysis supported the overall fit of the measurement

model, χ2 (24) = 34.21 (p = .08), CFI= .97, RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .06. In addition, all scales

exceeded the recommended level of .70 for construct reliability (CR) and .50 for average

variance extracted (AVE), demonstrating adequate reliability and convergent validity (Fornell &

Lacker, 1981; Hair et al, 1998; see Table 1). As for correlations, sponsorship beliefs had a

significant positive correlation with cause involvement (r = .54, p < .001), but non-significant

correlation with sport involvement (r = .13, p = .25); in addition, non-significant correlation was

found between sport involvement and cause involvement (r = -.02, p = .84). Based on these

correlations, the AVE value of each scale was greater than the square of its correlation with any

19

others scales, supporting discriminant validity (Fornell & Lacker, 1981). The collective results

provided evidence for the reliability and validity of the three scales.

---------------------------------

Insert Table 1 about here

---------------------------------

Analysis

A multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypotheses. This analysis included the

composite scores of sport involvement and cause involvement as the independent variables and

the composite scores of sponsorship beliefs as the dependent variable. Before the regression

analysis, we conducted preliminary analysis using ANOVA, and confirmed that none of the

demographic and socio-demographic variables measured had a significant effect on sponsorship

beliefs. Therefore, these variables were excluded from the regression analysis.

Results

Descriptive results support the efficacy of cause-related sport sponsorship in inducing positive

responses among employees. According to the frequency analysis of the three items for

sponsorship beliefs, 88.6% of the 131 respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the sponsorship

of the 2012 FESJC made them feel more favorable toward their companies; 81.7% agreed or

strongly agreed that this sponsorship improved their perception of their companies; and 64.2%

agreed or strongly agreed that this sponsorship would make them more likely to stay with their

companies. Furthermore, the mean composite score of this scale was 6.18 (SD = 1.11) where the

maximum possible score was 7. As for the remaining variables, sport involvement had a mean of

5.32 (SD = 1.53), and cause involvement had a mean of 6.34 (SD = .83) (for both, the maximum

possible score was 7).

20

Regarding the testing of the hypotheses, the regression model explained approximately

one fourth of the variance in sponsorship beliefs, R2 = .24, p < .001. Specifically, cause

involvement had a significant positive association with sponsorship beliefs (β = .48, t = 6.17, p <

.001), whereas sport involvement had a non-significant association (β = .08, t = 1.08, p = .28).

These results rejected H1, but supported H2.

Discussion

This study demonstrates how employees would form their beliefs about their companies’

sponsorship of a cause-related sport event by focusing on the main effects of their involvement

with sport and cause. A unique contribution of this study relates to the non-significant effect of

sport involvement on employees’ sponsorship beliefs. Although the study participants generally

believed that their companies’ sponsorship of the 2012 FESJC was an effective internal

marketing strategy, such beliefs were unaffected by their psychological connection with the

sponsored sport (i.e., golf). This finding contradicts the existing literature on sponsorship linked

internal marketing that has focused on the role of sport in understanding employees’ assessment

of sport sponsorship (Hickman et al, 2005; Zepf, 2008). Specifically, despite the prevailing logic

that companies can enhance the perception of goodwill by sponsoring sport that is important to

their employees (Meenaghan, 2001; Zepf, 2008), we find that this logic does not apply to cause-

related sport sponsorship, a unique type of sport sponsorship closely affiliated with a cause

(Irwin et al, 2003). Our finding contributes to the literature by indicating that how employees

evaluate cause-related sport sponsorship may be different from their evaluation process of

traditional sport sponsorship without the cause affiliation. This finding highlights the need to

conduct further internal marketing research specific to cause-related sport sponsorship.

21

In addition, the finding that cause involvement has a significant effect on employees’

beliefs confirms previous studies indicating the important role of the cause affiliation in cause

sponsorship for both consumers (Cornwell & Coote, 2005; Grau & Folse, 2007; Scott &

Solomon) and employees (Drumwright, 1996). This finding is noteworthy because cause

involvement alone explained a large amount of the variance in employees’ beliefs (R2 = .24),

while none of the demographic and socio-demographic characteristics of the employees were

related to the outcome. Furthermore, the standardized regression coefficient of cause

involvement identified in this study (β = .48) is comparable to the standardized coefficient for

the effect of cause identification on consumer intention to purchase products linked to the cause

found in Cornwell and Coote (2005; β = .54). Therefore, the finding of this study reveals that,

similar to the consumer context, the company can enjoy internal marketing benefits from its

cause-related sport sponsorship when the affiliated cause is important for its employees.

Collectively, the results from the two hypotheses indicate that employees perceive the

benefits of cause-related sport sponsorship from its cause affiliation, but not from its sport

affiliation. These results diverge from our presumption based on the literature on sponsorship

linked internal marketing (Hickman et al, 2005; Zepf, 2008). Yet the results are consistent with

Meenaghan’s (2001) findings from a focus group of consumers that the sponsorship of a cause

generates a higher level of goodwill than do other categories of sponsorship, including sport

sponsorship. The results can also be explained from Plewa and Quester’s (2011) conceptual work

on the link between sport sponsorship and corporate social responsibility (CSR), or “(corporate)

actions that appear to further some social good” (McWilliams & Siegel, 2000, p. 117).

According to Plewa and Quester, although increasing employees’ perception of CSR is essential

to establish the relationship between sport sponsorship and internal marketing benefits (e.g.,

22

employee retention), the mere sponsorship of a regular sport event has little effect on the

perception of CSR; instead, companies must “choose a specific event of particular relevance to

the community” (p. 305), such as a cause-related sport event, to link their sponsorship with CSR.

Therefore, if employees see cause-related sport sponsorship as part of their company’s CSR, then

they are likely to assess the level of goodwill generated from the sponsorship based on the extent

to which the sponsored cause, rather than the sponsored sport, is important and relevant to them

and the community.

This study carries implications for corporations engaging in cause-related sport

sponsorship, particularly those utilizing the sponsorship as an internal marketing resource. That

only cause involvement results in positive beliefs about cause-related sport sponsorship suggests

that companies first solicit input from employees as to the causes, but not sports, of greatest

interest. Subsequently, a company should identify employees highly involved with the selected

cause and engage them in determining opportunities for leveraging the company’s sponsorship to

genuinely benefit the cause (e.g., awareness, donations, volunteering). Furthermore, corporate

sponsors can reinforce employees’ cause involvement in ways that allow them to display their

association with the cause to other event attendees. For example, corporations could offer the

employee some type of promotional material, possibly a pin or message to be worn on his or her

apparel that indicates their involvement with the cause (e.g., “we support St. Jude”). Providing

employees with associative material allows the employees to display their involvement with the

cause, thereby eliciting their positive beliefs about the cause-related sport sponsorship of the

company.

Although the results of this study are based on data collected from employees attending a

cause-related sport event, research on sponsorship linked internal marketing suggests that a

23

company’s sponsorship affects employees’ evaluation even if they do not directly experience the

sponsorship through event attendance (Hickman et al, 2005; Zepf, 2008). Therefore, the current

results can provide companies with insight on how they should communicate their cause-related

sport sponsorship to non-attending employees. Specifically, using various internal

communication channels (e.g., corporate websites, newsletters), a company should provide its

employees, regardless of whether or not they are located near the event site, with messages about

the importance of the cause affiliated with a cause-related sport event as well as the ways of

supporting the cause without attending the event. This should help employees develop their

psychological connection with the cause, leading them to evaluate the cause-related sport

sponsorship positively.

Limitations and Future Research

Our findings are subject to several limitations. The first limitation is the use of reduced scales to

measure variables included in the analyses. Because this study was conducted as part of a

commissioned survey that included items from various scales for assessing attendees’ event

experience, we selected a few items from each scale to address potential reductions in the

response rate and response quality associated with a lengthy survey (Deukens et al, 2004). To

ensure that the selected items would appropriately represent their original scales, we carefully

selected the items based on the criteria of judgmental item qualities, such as items’ quality of

expression and their relevancy to the research context (Stanton et al, 2002). As reported in the

method, we also confirmed the psychometric properties of all three multi-item scales through a

CFA. We, however, recognize the possibility that the exclusion of items might have led to

reducing the ability of this study to capture some important information relating to the variables.

24

The second limitation is the exclusion of employees who did not attend the event from

the sample. Examining only employees attending the event can be justified because employees

perceive greater benefits from a sponsorship when they participate in the sponsorship than when

they do not (Pichot et al, 2008). In addition, our examination of participating employees can

provide companies with implications for the ways of communicating cause-related sport

sponsorship to non-participating employees. Nevertheless, future research should be able to

provide broader implications by examining how employees’ evaluation of cause-related sport

sponsorship, as well as the roles of sport and cause involvement in determining their evaluation,

differs by their level of participation (e.g., attending vs. non-attending) in the sponsorship.

The third limitation is the limited external validity of our results. Although we addressed

nonresponse bias (Jordan et al, 2011; Miller & Smith, 1983), the generalizability of the current

results to the population is limited by the use of convenience sampling. In addition, because we

conducted this study at the event having a well-established relationship with the cause, one

remaining question is how the effects of sport and cause involvement differ for a newer cause-

related sport event. Another important question is whether the strong effect of cause involvement

is observed for the sponsorship of sport organizations’ community involvement activities, the

second identified type of cause-related sport sponsorship (Fortunato, 2009). Future studies

should address these questions by conducting field surveys at different cause-related sport

sponsorships or by using experimental designs. As an example of the latter, researchers can

conduct experimental studies with fictitious press releases to test whether the current results are

replicable for cause-related sport sponsorships described to be associated with different sports

and causes.

25

Along with addressing the limitations above, future research should search additional

independent variables that influence employees’ beliefs about cause-related sport sponsorship.

This is because a large variance in the dependent variable was left unexplained by the variables

examined in this study. For example, the perceived congruence between a sponsor and a cause-

related sport event may serve as a significant determinant, given its identified role in the

consumer context (Cornwell et al, 2005). Moreover, future studies can extend the current

findings by testing the direct effects of both sport and cause involvement on other important

employee outcomes, such as organizational identification and service quality (Khan & Stanton,

2010).

26

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Table 1 Descriptive Statistics, Standardized Factor Loadings, Construct Reliability Coefficients,

and Average Variance Extracted for the Measurement Model

Items M SD β CR AVE

Sport Involvement 5.32 1.53 .89 .74

1. I really enjoy following golf. 6.11 1.35 .76

2. Golf has a central role in my life. 5.11 1.79 .91

3. Being a golf fan says a lot about who I am. 4.73 1.89 .90

Cause Involvement 6.34 .83 .77 .53

1. Supporting St. Jude is important to me. 6.65 .72 .72

2. I could see myself donating some of my time to supporting

St. Jude 6.18 1.17 .70

3. I can identify with St. Jude. 6.18 1.09 .77

Sponsorship Beliefs 6.18 1.11 .89 .72

1. The sponsorship of the FESJC made me feel more favorable

toward my company. 6.50 .94 .86

2. The sponsorship of the FESJC improved my perception of

my company. 6.27 1.16 .92

3. The sponsorship of the FESJC would make me more likely

to stay with my company. 5.77 1.59 .76

Note. N = 131; All items were measured on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from strongly

disagree (1) to strongly agree (7); All standardized factor loadings were significant (p <

.001); M = Mean; SD = standard deviation; β =Standardized factor loadings; CR = Construct

reliability coefficients; AVE = Average variance extracted.